The present invention relates generally to systems for selling and dispensing consumer products and services, and more particularly to systems which enable an unattended automated service station to sell and dispensing products, particularly motor fuel, by accepting cash and returning change due to the purchaser for the transaction.
Heretofore, equipment has been provided at service stations which permits the remote enablement of gasoline dispensers by an attendant-controlled terminal located within the service station. In such equipment, the terminal is located in the sales office of the service station away from the island which contains the fuel pump dispensers. This type of system may be considered as only partly automated because only the attendant can enable the fuel dispensing pumps from within the service station. This remote enablement feature is beneficial because it prevents the theft of motor fuel from such a service station.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,786,421 discloses a system which permits a purchaser to purchase and dispense motor fuel by inserting a credit or debit card into a card reader on the fueling island. Although this system represents an improvement over the attendant-controlled fueling islands described above, it can only be actuated by a credit or debit card and is not capable of either receiving cash as payment for the transaction from the purchaser or giving change from the transaction back to the customer.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,931,497, which issued Jan. 6, 1976, discloses an automatic fuel dispenser which is actuated by the receipt of either a valid credit card or cash to establish a pre-established dispensing limit for a particular quantity of motor fuel up to the limit of the cash deposited or credit card limit inputted by the user. Although this system is an improvement over the system described above in U.S. Pat. No. 3,786,421, it suffers from certain inherent disadvantages because it is not a completely self-sufficient system and it has no ability to accept any amount of cash as payment for motor fuel or make exact change for a purchase of motor fuel.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,935,435, issued Jan. 27, 1976 describes an automatic gasoline dispenser which is an improvement over the system described above in U.S. Pat. No. 3,931,497 because it describes a system which is purchaser driven. A purchaser inserts tokens into the fuel dispenser to build up credit for a defined quantity of fuel. The system calculates the quantity of fuel dispensed by sensing fluid pulses and computes the amount of change due the purchaser, if any. Coins are dispensed to the purchaser as change. However, this type system is not without its peculiar faults because it requires a customer to purchase tokens in advance from a separate facility and therefore cannot act as a fully automated gasoline dispenser. It is also incapable of accepting cash as payment and calculating change from the inserted cash. Additionally, this system carries a limited amount of coins as a change supply and requires that the change supply be monitored.
The convenience of unattended automated service and selling stations for selling and dispensing items, particularly fuel, has created an ever-increasing need for such technology, and it is to that need that the present invention is directed. Additionally, state laws restrict the maximum amount of motor fuel that may be purchased for a particular grade of motor fuel at a single time from a single motor fuel dispenser. Unattended service stations using automated motor fuel dispensers must therefore have a limiting feature to comply with such laws. Still further, in unattended service stations having automated fuel dispensers which accept both cash and credit or debit cards, it is desirable to have a means for controlling the two different acceptors which control means has the ability to disable one acceptor while the other acceptor is enabled.
None of the prior art service station systems described above discloses a system which accepts cash as payment for a fuel purchase and provides change in the form of cash, i.e. currency or coins, for the purchase and further recycles coins inserted as payment into a change supply, nor a system in which cash acceptors and credit acceptors are controlled together to enable the operation of only one acceptor during the transaction. The prior art therefore falls short of providing a system which completely automates a service station for dispensing of motor fuel.